Kehrä

Usko Meriläinen

Kehrä

Music Finland

Description

Kehrä (meaning a round or circle) is scored for normal symphony orchestra but the overall sound is dominated by the strings. The other instruments do not, for example, join in until over a third of the way through. In the opening section Meriläinen favours translucent, even brittle timbres evocative of Webern, restrained dynamics and dense thematic motifs. The sound nevertheless grows richer as the other instrument groups join in, and the work has flashes that rapidly ignite. According to Meriläinen, the title of the work inspired in him images of “the cosiness of a dusky room”, “the disc of the sun, the source of life” and the burning, destructive force of the sun, “a sense of danger, of fear”.

Meriläinen revised the score of Kehrä in 2002-2003 and gave it the subtitle Symphony No. 6.